


Simple Plans

by Sholio



Category: Black Panther (2018)
Genre: Character Study, Espionage, Friendship, Gen, Slice of Life, Wakanda (Marvel)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-03
Updated: 2019-04-03
Packaged: 2020-01-04 04:47:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18336470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: Shuri's two "projects" warily orbit each other.





	1. Bucky

Bucky has never met anyone quite like Shuri before. He thinks she can't possibly be the age she looks. But then again, they do things differently here.

"So stiff," Shuri murmurs, moving one of the wires on his forehead. He's sitting on a bed in the medical wing, trying to look as harmless as possible, trying not to show that he's all but vibrating out of his skin with tension -- she doesn't know what she's messing with, is what he keeps thinking. She doesn't even have guards in the room. And this place is ... it's ... it's _not_ a Hydra lab, he knows that but ... but there are parts of him that don't know it, yet. Holding his own panic at bay along with his fear of hurting her is ... it's a lot.

They've been doing these sessions for almost a month now -- since the Wakandan doctors declared enough of the minefield in his brain cleared away to wake him from cryo, said they'd done all they could while he was asleep, and the rest of the work needed to be done with his conscious mind active. It still hasn't gotten easier. And it doesn't help that Shuri has been this way from the beginning. No guards, at least no visible ones, though Bucky also suspects that at a single yelp from her, twenty of those terrifying warrior women would be in this room in a heartbeat. She probably also has technological defenses that he can't even see. But he's beaten his way through worse; that's the terrible part.

"Relax, please," Shuri says, looking at her readouts. "I need you to think of nice things. Only nice things."

For a moment his mind goes blank, making Shuri roll her eyes and giving him an uncomfortable reminder that she can ... well -- she's reassured him that she can't _actually_ see what he's thinking, but she can see enough of his mental activity on her screens to tell he's not following instructions. The problem is, he genuinely can't think of any nice things to think about. 

"Really?" Shuri murmurs, as if he'd spoken aloud. "Let me suggest some things, then. Puppies? Kittens? Fruit ices?"

Wakanda, he thinks. The kids. The sun setting over the lake. Him and Steve, ten years old, sitting on a fire escape and dangling their legs and throwing rocks into the alley below.

"That's better," Shuri declares. "Now I need you to think of the number one. Hold it in your mind."

He does, aware of her fingers moving across her readouts, doing things he doesn't understand. In the background, her assistants move around quietly, doing other things he doesn't understand. He's watching them instead of her -- eyes always moving, never able to stop looking for threats, he doesn't seem to know how -- when his gaze catches on the man who has just quietly slipped into the room.

This man would be noticeable anyway; his is the only white face Bucky has seen in weeks other than Steve's and Natasha's. But Bucky knows this man. And the memories aren't good ones.

It's CIA Agent Everett Ross. Who has just noticed him, too.

This man put him in a cage, once. Bucky understands why; hell, he even sympathizes with it. But he also knows where Ross's loyalties lie, and they're not here, and they're not with him.

Bucky knows that Ross turns up in the Wakandan capital occasionally. It's just that he's been lucky enough not to run into him, so far.

It's hard to say what Ross is thinking; there's a moment of surprise, and then Shuri declares, "Oh, it's _you,"_ as if Ross has somehow personally offended her. "Sit there, please." She points to a bed.

Ross sits, because there's not much else you can do when you get an order from someone who is second in line to the throne of the country you're in, and that's even aside from the casual air of command she wields. He also catches Bucky's eye with a look of wry humor, and there's a moment of shared ... it's not camaraderie exactly, more like understanding, before Bucky looks away.

"Hello, Your Highness," Ross says, and then, on a slight hesitation, "Sergeant Barnes."

Bucky thinks about saying he's not that anymore, but he doesn't really want to have that conversation. Doesn't want to have any conversations with someone who directly represents the security interests of a country that considers him an extremely dangerous wanted criminal. Instead he nods, and Shuri makes a small noise of frustration and impatiently grabs his chin, repositioning his head. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Ross watching this. He gets the uncomfortable feeling that there's a lot going on behind that deceptively mild expression. 

Shuri reaches for a bottle of the cool, conductive goo she uses to attach the leads to Bucky's forehead and repositions them, but she addresses herself to Ross. "You are late for your follow-up. Very late. _Weeks_ late. If your spine falls out, you have no one but yourself to blame."

"Is that something that could happen?" Ross sounds more curious than horrified. "My spine falling out?"

"It depends on a great many factors, most of which involve you doing extremely ill-advised things which you are prone to doing." She turns Bucky's head to the side with the tips of her fingers, gentle but firm. "Lie down, Ross. I will be finished in a minute. Did you bring what I asked for?"

"Well, not _here._ It's in my room." Ross settles on his stomach on the bed. He's casually dressed in local clothes, and he folds his arms under his head and props his chin on his forearms to watch them. "Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a vintage, mint-condition Lando Calrissian action figure with all the pieces?"

"I know that you enjoy a challenge."

"At least this one didn't involve going to the Disney Princess store."

"Are you hearing this?" Shuri appeals to Bucky, and pats him on the shoulder while darting a sharp look at Ross. "Look at what a very unproblematic patient _this_ one is, Ross. He comes when instructed and even shows up early every time." She pulls off a handful of wires and hands Bucky a cloth to wipe his face, then pats him on the shoulder again. "You could learn a lot from him. Such as not to _bother_ me when I am working, when you could be bothering the medical attendants instead --"

"You'll notice I'm down here instead of in your lab," Ross offers mildly. "I was _trying_ to bother the medical attendants instead, but you won't let me."

"Talking interferes with my scans," Shuri declares, picking up a wandlike device as she heads for him.

"It never did before."

"Still talking."

Ross shuts up with a grin, and turns his head to the side, eyes half closed, lying obediently still on the table as she runs her scanner down his spine above the loose fabric of his tunic.

"What did you do to yourself?" Shuri's voice is startled right out of its tone of casual banter. She sounds genuinely, deeply affronted.

"Just a little light torture, in a part of the world I can't admit I was in." He turns to look up at her. "Don't look like that, Princess."

"What did I say about talking?" she says, with a catch in her voice, and plants a hand on his shoulder as she runs the scanner across his back.

Bucky would have liked to stay. Collecting information on the opposition is a deeply ingrained habit, and this man is still the enemy: _not_ harmless, never that, no matter the light conversation with Shuri, not as long as the CIA is involved. But in Ross and Shuri's mutual moment of distraction, he decides to slip out instead.

 

***

 

He stays alert for Ross, after that. The man isn't hard to spot. He stands out in Wakanda as much as Bucky knows he himself must. More, even. The man might dress like a local, but the way he carries himself speaks of a life spent doing other things in other places.

Still, it's hard to tell _what_ he's doing here, exactly. Bucky glimpses him in the palace gardens, at a café, on a balcony with T'Challa. He's just kind of ... around.

Bucky himself effectively has the run of both the palace and the capital, but he is very much aware of at least one of the Dora Milaje shadowing him at all times when he's outside Shuri's lab or the medical wing. This makes him aware that there are probably defenses in those places that he doesn't know about.

But they mostly leave him alone. He _could_ follow Ross. He doesn't. He wonders if he's part of the reason why Ross is here -- not just him, but also Steve, who has become extremely scarce since the CIA agent showed up.

Whether or not he's been keeping tabs on Ross (which, okay, he has, a little bit), Bucky is definitely minding his own business when Ross approaches him: sitting in the shade in a small garden, nowhere near the palace, with a cup of iced coffee. Ross stops at a vendor and then comes over to him with a cup of coffee in hand. Telegraphing his appearance, Bucky knows, although he also knows Ross couldn't sneak up on him undetected (and he thinks that Ross knows it too).

"Anyone sitting here?" Ross asks. 

Bucky shrugs. The CIA agent sits on the bench across from him.

"They have good coffee here," Ross says. "I think it's local."

"We used to make it from boiling grounds three days in a row and straining it through a sock," Bucky says. "So I wouldn't know what good coffee is supposed to taste like."

Ross barks a sharp laugh. "I guess so. You know, it's easy to forget that about you, sometimes."

"Are you here to tell me that I look good for a hundred-year-old guy?"

With a slight smile, Ross says, "Actually, I was going to say that the Princess Shuri speaks highly of you."

Bucky had thought he understood the rules here: the wariness, the tension, the way they're circling each other as enemies, feeling each other out. He doesn't _like_ this kind of thing -- he's not nearly as good at it as he is at just killing people, but he doesn't want to be good at that anymore -- but he knows when it's happening. Now he's caught off guard by realizing that he doesn't actually know what's happening at all.

"There's a scar here," Ross says. He lowers his head and reaches back as far as he can, putting a hand on the back of his neck, along the ridges of his spine above his shoulder blades. "Not really that noticeable. I was shot in the spine. Severed my spinal cord. I would have died. I _was_ dying. Shuri saved my life."

Well, that explains a few things, and fails to explain a few others. "Okay," Bucky says, cautiously.

Ross drops his hand to curl around the coffee cup between his knees. "I'm just saying. She likes fixing things. But she's pretty choosy about the projects she takes on. At least ..." He shrugs. "I like to think so."

"You're one of her projects."

"Basically."

It's not just that; Bucky remembers the hitch in her voice, the fall of her hand to Ross's shoulder. But then he thinks of Shuri's firm hands repositioning his head, the playful way she asks him about his day before devoting precious hours of her own day to rewriting the contents of his fucked-up head.

She's not a doctor. It isn't her job. She does this kind of thing because she wants to. Shuri likes helping people, and she likes puzzles, and somewhere at the intersection of those things, she's a good-hearted kid who doesn't like seeing people in pain.

The little Border Tribe kids have been teaching Bucky to herd goats. He thinks he might bring her some goat cheese the next time, from the herbed batch he's been making. He hasn't been able to think of a way to repay her; there's nothing he can do that would be enough. But maybe she'd like some goat cheese, and someone to talk to while she works on her projects. 

Across the garden, the coffee vendor is packing up her cart as the shadows grow long and purple under the acacia and sycamore figs. "Why are you really here?" Bucky asks Ross, quietly.

Ross hesitates, then says, "Because I want to be." 

And Bucky's not sure if he means in Wakanda, or here in this garden now. But he thinks it's a good answer.


	2. Ross

Intelligence work is not the kind of thing that's supposed to produce friendships. But it does.

You take a bullet for someone, they run back into a palace in the middle of a coup to save your life when it would be infinitely easier to leave you behind; too much of this trading of lifesaving until there's no keeping score anymore, and you end up like this, at a terrace café having pleasant conversation over two large bowls of spiced lentil stew, drinking excellent but very strong coffee from tiny porcelain cups.

"Do you like the coffee?" Nakia asks. "It's a strain found in the Mountain Tribe uplands. It exists nowhere outside Wakanda."

"It's good. You guys should think about exporting this, now that you're opening up trade."

A smile dances in her eyes. "But we have no need to. There is so little that we need from the outside."

"Speak for yourself; I think Shuri wishes that Disney would open a licensed merchandise outlet in the middle of the capital."

Nakia shudders. "Please, may I be safely among my ancestors before that happens. But as for the coffee, I can give you a supply to take back with you, if you like."

"Probably better not," Everett says regretfully. "I'm not that much of a coffee connoisseur, and you _can_ get decent coffee outside Wakanda, believe it or not. It'd just be one more thing to need a cover story for."

"True --" She breaks off and strokes a thumb across a kimoyo bead. Everett is not privy to the ensuing conversation, but he knows exactly who it is by the softness in her eyes and the smile that curves a corner of her mouth, a smile that exists for one man alone. 

She breaks the contact and opens her mouth to speak. 

"T'Challa says hi?" Everett guesses.

"Oh ... you." Nakia throws a piece of flatbread at him. "Indeed. The king has a request for you. One of your own is at the border, and T'Challa would like to respectfully ask you to deal with them."

Everett gives her a questioning look. "One of mine? Meaning what? CIA? Americans? White people? What?"

Nakia shrugs, and rises from the table. "Shall we find out?"

He doesn't ask if she's tagging along out of curiosity, as backup, or to find out what he's going to say to his fellow agent or whoever it turns out to be -- whether T'Challa asked her to, or whether she decided to on her own. He thinks probably all of the above.

 

***

 

"One of your own" turns out to mean Nick Fury. Everett and Nakia take the long way around, to avoid coming out directly through the holographic screen. They find Fury in the small thatch-roofed house of a Border Tribe member who is offering him tea and apparently playing the role of Stock Goatherder #5 today. Everett remembers seeing her around Shuri's lab the other day; he's pretty sure she has a degree in something electrical-engineering-related.

"... more tea, sir? You honor my humble family with your presence -- oh, Mr. Ross, Lady Nakia, please, I am too honored ..."

"May we speak to your guest alone, mother?" Nakia asks, and the woman pours tea and then bows her way out with further effusive thanks for gracing her humble home, et cetera.

"Don't go overboard," Everett mutters to her as she passes him in the doorway. Nakia merely looks amused. "He's not stupid, you know."

The Border Tribe woman pats him on the shoulder. "You do your job, I do mine," she murmurs back, for his ears only, and he acknowledges the truth of that with a wry nod before the curtain falls shut behind her.

"Agent Ross," Fury says, in a casually conversational tone as if they'd met in a coffee shop rather than on the borders of one of the world's most reclusive nations. "Miss Nakia -- I don't suppose it's Queen, is it? Or Agent?"

"Neither." Nakia inclines her head politely. "Just Nakia."

"Mm-hmm," is Fury's response, and it occurs to Everett that showing up with Nakia doesn't really do much for his plausible deniability here, especially when Fury asks, "So, you working or on vacation, Ross?"

"I was wondering the same about you. Aren't you retired these days?"

"Well, that settles it, then," Fury says. "It's obviously got to be a vacation since I don't have a job."

Nakia reaches for the teapot, looking entertained. It occurs to Ross that he's in the presence of two of the top spies from two different nations. He feels vaguely outclassed.

And also annoyed at being interrupted in the middle of an excellent meal to play the old man's games. "In that case, I guess we can have our tea and then I can get back to my vacation and you can get back to yours."

"Guess so," Fury says. He nods his thanks to Nakia and takes the topped-off bowl of tea she hands him. "Met anybody interesting on your vacation?"

"Lots of people," Everett says. "It's half the reason I like to travel."

"What's that line from that Kubrick movie? Travel the world, meet interesting people, kill them?"

" _Apocalypse Now_ ," Everett says, carefully not looking at Nakia. "It's Coppola, not Kubrick."

"My bad. Film buff?"

"Not really. Too busy."

"Too bad," Fury says. "I've been catching up on my movie watching since I retired. All the classics. _North by Northwest._ _Cool Hand Luke._ " He shrugs. " _Bourne Identity._ "

"You left out _The Fugitive,"_ Everett says.

"Figured it was a little too on the nose."

"Look, all I've done for the last week is hang out on the beach and read my book," Everett tells him. "I'm on temporary medical leave. Ask anybody. I'm here for my health."

Fury studies him for a moment, then: "You're too damn nice for this job, Ross."

"I'm not _nice,"_ Everett says, affronted. Nakia's poker face shifts ever so slightly and she covers it with a sip of tea.

"And I'm not that much of a tea drinker, but here we are." He turns to Nakia and smiles. "It's excellent tea."

"Thank you," Nakia says.

"Don't suppose you want to talk about anything he won't."

"I'm afraid I know nothing of value."

"I very much doubt that," Fury says, while they both give him innocent looks. Finally he heaves a sigh. "Fine. Look, just let me leave you both with this. I'm not here with SHIELD or with any world government. I know what Wakanda is doing in all of this, everyone does, and the next person who comes around asking questions about this might not be as nice as I am."

"Oh, we're all nice around here," Nakia says, smiling, showing teeth.

 

***

 

"So you are covering for the White Wolf," Nakia remarks once they're outside.

"I'm not covering for him. I just don't give out information for free to other agencies. You'd do the same."

"You _are_ nice, you know," Nakia says. He gives her a disgruntled look, and she laughs. "It's what we like about you. I think you tried very hard for many years not to be, and you've had to do things that were not nice at all. So have I. I understand. But you _are."_

"I'm nice, you're nice, we're all nice people in our countries' foreign service," he says, and she laughs loud and long, and takes him to a plaza in the capital where she barters for two cups of milky, honey-sweetened tea and a burlap sack of Wakandan-exclusive coffee beans.


End file.
